IPS defends journalist

PANAMA. The Inter-American Press Society IPS said that the sentence given to the journalist Jean Marcel Chéry for trespassing into the property of the former Minister of Justice and now judge of Supreme Court, Winston Spadafora is nothing more than judicial harassment.

The IPS director, Enrique Santos Calderón from the Colombian newspaper, El Tiempo, said that the verdict against Chéry represented another way of violating the freedom of the press.

Meanwhile, the Council of Journalism had a meeting with the president of the Supreme Court, Harley Mitchell,to discuss irregularities found in the verdict given by the judge Ricardo Mazza Moreno

Chéry, who is current editorof the tabloid El Siglo has five working days to appeal his sentence and has added another lawyer to his legal team.

The case has alarmed the mass media in Panama.